An Old Love Letter...

I don't usually keep love letters or pictures.

After things go sour, and they usually do, the mementos that I have kept all serve as painful reminders of Mistakes Made or Wrongs Suffered.

So, I was very surprised to find this email saved in my emailbox. Truth be told, I was in there, digging around, looking for some trace of someone else that I was badly missing. The other person is erased entirely. All that I have left are my own memories and they fade, month to month. I despair to think that eventually I'll forget this other person entirely someday.

I remember receiving this email and I remember being touched by the effort that this girl made to write this to me. She wasn't given to eloquence or written poems or love notes. She was a quiet person and I imagine the urge to write this to me welled up so much inside of her, that she was compelled to write this to me out of nowhere.

The title of the email was "Morning, Sunshine."

This was in November of 2005.

This is what she wrote to me...

I was thinking about you this morning and thinking how happy I am that I get to see you tonight.

Which made me think how I was thinking in class the other day how happy I am in general to have met you, that you accepted my proposal for a date, that I now get to bury my face in your neck.

How just the sound of your voice can make my night that much better and how I can't help but grin when I see you.

How I love that you've opened new doors for me to explore, and how much getting to know you the last couple of months has enriched various aspects of my life.

I thought you should know that I think you are pretty amazing.

Didn't mean to get all mushy on you. Must be PMS. ;)

I hope you had fun last night and have a good day at work. Don't let em work you too hard.

B.

I don't know where she is right now.

I ended that relationship, because I felt like she was always mad at me for things that I couldn't do right. Which was very frustrating.

When I suggested on the phone that perhaps we should just end the relationship, she hung up on me immediately. I didn't call her back. Ten minutes later, she called me, crying. She asked me if I was sure that this was what I wanted. I said that I wasn't, but that I didn't want the relationship that we were having. That I was tired of her being silently angry with me, all the time. For not seeing her enough. For not holding her enough. For not... Hell, I can't remember why she was always so mad at me. Maybe because I wasn't the guy that she thought I was. And she was mad at me for not telling her that up front. As if I could.

My memories of this girl are sweet ones. She was so pretty and sexy and fresh and young and exciting. I would suggest something naughty and she'd look shocked for a second and then give it a try. I love the memories of those moments. The look of determination in her eyes as she forged new ground and tried something new, trusting my recommendation.

Our little love affair was too brief.

I don't think I would be so cavalier about having someone love me like that, again. I think that instead of suggesting a "break-up", that I would spend some time discussing the things that were frustrating me and try to draw out the things that were frustrating her. And deal with them. As normal, healthy couples do.

Chalk that up as a lesson learned, to be applied the next time around.

"Once upon a time, a pretty girl loved me and wrote something very nice to me. And now I've shared it with you."

Regretfully,
Mr.B